Bye-bye, downloads: Apple’s new Podcasts app enables better streaming

Hands-on with the new browsing carousel and more robust management controls.

With no fanfare other than a featured spot on its App Store, Apple has officially launched a separate app for users to manage and listen to podcasts, straightforwardly titled "Podcasts." The major advantage of the app is that it erases the distinction between podcast episodes that have and have not been downloaded—a longtime hangup in the Music app, and one that podcast makers have previously had to circumvent. The app also adds more robust tools for managing podcasts on iOS devices themselves.

In days of yore, iOS users had two options for getting a podcast on their devices: downloading it to a PC and then transferring it via USB cable, or downloading it straight to a device itself—streaming was a recently added feature, but had few options for navigation and didn't work well. Because podcasts can sometimes be long and rambling affairs, this resulted in tiresome download times. Many popular podcasts, such as "WTF with Marc Maron," circumvented this problem by creating a separate app for the podcast that allowed streaming. Apple has finally decided to erase the download distinction itself, and as a consequence, further smudged the line between podcasts you subscribe to and podcasts you don't.

The front-facing section of the Podcasts app contains icons for your current subscriptions.

When browsing the Library section, podcasts that users have already subscribed to automatically populate the screen, with both downloaded and un-downloaded episodes displayed chronologically. If an episode isn't yet downloaded, a small gray button with an arrow is displayed next to it that will start the download if pressed. But even if the episode isn't downloaded, users can still tap the episode and hear its content via streaming, provided they're connected by data or WiFi, with much better playback controls.

Each podcast has an individual settings app that makes it easier to manage straight from an iOS device.

Selecting an individual podcast episode lets users mark it as played.

Apple has added individual settings menus for each podcast, where users can flip switches to subscribe or not, auto-download or not (if unsubscribed, un-downloaded episodes will not display). Users can sort the episodes by newest or oldest first and mark all as played or unplayed with the tap of a button.

In addition to subscriptions in the library, users can view "Top Stations," which display a bunch of popular podcasts by a carousel of categories such as Technology, News and Politics, and Health. Some categories have subcategories, such as Automotive and Video Games under Games and Hobbies.

One landing on the Top Station carousel

The display is highly visual and not easily navigated. Fortunately, Apple has preserved the old browsing system from the iTunes app in the Podcast app's Catalog section (likewise, the podcast section is still on full display in the iTunes and Music app; we expect they'll disappear eventually). A toggle in Top Stations allows users to switch between audio and video podcasts, which is underpopulated in some sections like Science and Medicine.

If we select one of the square icons in the Top Stations section, the app will automatically begin playing a (seemingly random) episode of the show. Tapping the small "i" that appears next to the right hand corner of the icon brings up a list of episodes, as well as a subscribe button that will add the podcast to the library. From here, we can listen to recent episodes without subscribing or downloading.

Getting the info for this podcast lets us see and play a handful of recent episodes without downloading or subscribing.

More controls are hidden behind the picture in the Now Playing screen.

The Now Playing screen for Podcasts has received a slight revamp. Rather than only being able to skip back 30 seconds, users can now skip back 10 seconds or skip ahead 30 seconds. The speed toggle that slowed podcasts by half or sped them up double-time is no longer anywhere to be found. (Update: a reader notes that swiping up on the podcast's icon will turn up the missing speed controls, as well as a scrub bar and a sleep timer. We've added a screenshot above.)

While the new library organization model is a vast improvement over the old one, we're not sure how useful the Top Stations section will be, based on its content or layout. The app negates some of the major downsides that previously forced podcast creators outside the normal iTunes system into apps of their own. But on the other hand, we wonder if the newly blurred lines between subscribing, streaming, downloading, and listening won't muck up the listener counts that podcasters are so fond of using as a metric.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

54 Reader Comments

I coulda sworn you could stream podcasts by clicking on the episode title in the iTunes app. I did it a few times before in before iOS5. Cell bandwidth is spotty here so a few would eventually fail to keep up and stall, and it would never remember your spot. The new app is pretty cool, just needs a way to authorize Audible subscriptions so I can sync those with iTunes on my PC. Just wish Apple would stop fracturing the iPod app. We've gone from a unified app to three separate apps, that individually offer little new features than when they were combined.

By the way, the speed up and slowdown toggle is still there. Tapping the album art slides it up revealing the toggle in the middle, a sleep timer, the playback progress bar, and a button to share a link to the ep. A pretty nifty tape player animation too.

But on the other hand, we wonder if the newly blurred lines between subscribing, streaming, downloading, and listening won't muck up the listener counts that podcasters are so fond of using as a metric.

Is the 'we' part of the Ars editorial 'style book'? It jars me from my reading flow whenever I encounter it written this way.

The speed toggle is a bit hidden. You have to tap or swipe up on the podcast artwork when on the "Now Playing" screen. That reveals a screen that has faux tape reels spinning around. It allows you to set the speed to slow or fast (I guess 1/2x and 2x), share the episode, set a sleep timer, and scrub backwards and forwards. Bonus: when you scrub, you can see the tape reels grow and shrink proportional to the progress of the podcast!

One failure I see with this app is the lack of OPML importing. Most podcast apps can export an OPML list of subscribed podcasts (iTunes can too). It would be nice to be able to import the OPML if you have a large number of podcasts you listen to. I use iCatcher and am pretty happy with it. I don't think I'll be switching to this for more than casual streaming of shows I hear about.

I was excited about the sleep timer feature, but as far as I can tell, it always stops playing after the selected number of minutes, regardless of whether you've been using the device in the meantime.

I was hoping for something that would reset the timer whenever you tapped the screen, changed the volume, etc.. This would be a nice way to keep it playing until you fell asleep; you'd just need to tap the power button or something every few minutes. Then when you fell asleep, the podcast would soon stop playing, and you wouldn't lose your place.

It's pretty, that's for sure. Unfortunately it's also hobbled by the 50MB limit over cellular, so if you're a fan of longer podcasts or video podcasts, no downloading for you.

Honestly, it's very nice to look at and has some good functionality, but I'll be sticking to Downcast. If Apple included something similar to what downcast has for larger files (queue for Wi-Fi or download now), I'd consider it.

EDIT: One more thing to consider. If you're relying on iTunes to manage your podcast fix through a smaller iDevice with cellular service or is almost always in contact with Wi-Fi, this would be a decent alternative. If you're like me and don't have Wi-Fi near your work, prefer to listen to podcasts at a higher rate of speed and have plenty of storage space, just go with Downcast.

I am in the middle of downloading it. So this question may become moot.

I have a smart playlist that gathers all of the podcasts in iTunes and it plays them all sequentially based on when iTunes automatically downloads them. This way I listen to all of them and I never have to get bored listening to 50 episodes of the same podcasts. Playcount is set to 0 so if I finish a podcast out of order, it gets automatically removed from the list.

I'm not seeing a way on how to sync with my already carefully curated list on my Mac's iTunes. It says it has "seamless transition" between devices, does that include the Mac ? I listen to podcasts on Mac, then hope to pick them up at synced locations on my iPhone.

I've loved podcasts for quite a while, and I still prefer to listen to the them on a separate device when I'm out and about. This used to be a new iPod Nano until the 'turn on the screen' button died, so I moved onto a new shuffle. I can't wait until these little devices just get a touch smarter, the mythical iOS Nano, so it will sync content like podcasts to it. The iPhone while I'm out is my information device, I don't like have a headphone string stuck into it which gets tangled.

I'm not sure if this is only because I have a very large amount of podcasts on my iPhone, but this app is incredibly slow, locks up all the time and becomes instantly useless if it's downloading something.

When I turn on automatic updating for a podcast, it downloads the whole feed and gives me as many as 200 episodes. Does anyone know how to get rid of those old episodes? You can't swipe to delete them.

I also wonder how often the automatic syncing happens. There doesn't seem to be any way to manually refresh.

I've been irritated by bugs in Downcast, and I really was looking forward to this, but after downloading the new app, it's become apparent that it's not going to work out for me.

1. When you stream a specific episode from the "Catalog" it does the same thing the iTunes store did where it launches a QuickTime streaming player and you can't DO anything while this is happening. You can't navigate around elsewhere in the app, read podcast info, or do anything else without completely stopping the stream.

2. There is no reason to not let me download whatever I want to over 3G. Downcast doesn't forbid this, nor do they let you accidentally download gigs of stuff. They very kindly ask you if you're sure you want to download on 3G. No file size limit, like iOS. These file size limits make even less sense when you can stream the same amount of data.

3. If I subscribe to the podcast, then I can get the nice playback controls and the ability to navigate without the limitations mentioned in #1. I might not want to subscribe to the podcast though, I might just want to listen to a specific episode.

4. There are no limits to set for storing podcasts.

5. There are no ways to set a podcast to only download on a specific device while allowing others to sync (in fact, there are NO sync settings at all!) If want to only download several gigabyte video podcasts on my iPad WiFi, and not on my iPhone 4, I can easily do that in Downcast.

1. When you stream a specific episode from the "Catalog" it does the same thing the iTunes store did where it launches a QuickTime streaming player and you can't DO anything while this is happening. You can't navigate around elsewhere in the app, read podcast info, or do anything else without completely stopping the stream.

It did that for me one time. But I tried a couple of other podcasts where the streaming uses the same playback interface as for downloads. You can even skip around the episode, although it's not as smooth as with a downloaded episode. (One of these two was a feed hosted on my Mac.)

Obviously the HTTP server needs to be capable of starting a download in the middle of a file for scrubbing to work, but that still doesn't explain kicking certain podcasts to Quicktime for streaming.

1. When you stream a specific episode from the "Catalog" it does the same thing the iTunes store did where it launches a QuickTime streaming player and you can't DO anything while this is happening. You can't navigate around elsewhere in the app, read podcast info, or do anything else without completely stopping the stream.

It did that for me one time. But I tried a couple of other podcasts where the streaming uses the same playback interface as for downloads. You can even skip around the episode, although it's not as smooth as with a downloaded episode. (One of these two was a feed hosted on my Mac.)

Obviously the HTTP server needs to be capable of starting a download in the middle of a file for scrubbing to work, but that still doesn't explain kicking certain podcasts to Quicktime for streaming.

Which podcasts went to the streaming interface? I've tried several podcasts from the Catalog produced by different podcast producers (5by5, Mule Radio, NPR) but all that I've tried bring up the QT interface.

It is a sad day for Apple when their app reaches parity with the RIM podcast player. RIM has a "prevue" button, but essentially it just starts to play the podcast immediately. On the RIM player you can subscribe to get automatic downloads, or just download the podcasts episodes that you want.

Speaking of podcasts, may I make a shameless plug for the "Skeptic's Guide to the Universe."

Jsteel2001: I still remember what I wrote 10 minutes ago. No need to repeat the whole thing. I tried with a podcast feed on my Mac (standard Apache 2 installation) and the oldest Savage Love episode that showed up in the feed.

iljitsch: Same QT interface on my iPhone each for each attempt with Savage Love. To be clear, I'm only talking about clicking on something in the Catalog that I am not subscribed to and it brings up the QT interface each time. If you're streaming content you have already subscribed to inside the Library section, that's different.

But the 6 million dollar question for me - will my car see the app???? I listen to podcasts in my car all the time by plugging my phone into the adaptor that comes with the car - this brings up the music app in my car's console.

So far the problem with podcast apps is that the car cannot see them so I cannot listen to my podcasts unless they are inside the music app rendering them useless and leaving me stuck to manage podcasts via iTunes...

I must be getting old or Apple are loosing their touch as I can't work out how to play a downloaded podcast.

I found one in the catalog, clicked the download icon and it changed to Downloading and then Downloaded.

I now see a nice picture in the Library tab of the podcast and if I click on it then I see a title of the podcast subscription with a "Description" below. Nothing is listed here. (This is logically the place I might expect to see a list of downloads.) If I click on the title then I see the option to subscribe/sort. But no downloaded podcast.

What is it with Apple and these nutjob skeuomorphic designs? There used to be a time when Apple led the pack on UI design, but now...

+1

Also, the Podcasts app doesn't appear to be syncing back to iTunes where I left off (playback position) in a podcast on my iPhone. Is it intended to no longer sync between iOS devices and my Mac, or is that a bug? If I can no longer keep my podcasts sync'd between my iOS devices and my Mac, this app is going to be useless to me.

I'm very pleased they added a 30 sec forward button, scrubbing is easier, and the sleep function. Those were my top three wishes for improvements to the Music app. If the syncing would work, this would be a great app.